Racked: Muji Midtown Opening Day Madness: Free Chronotebooks

I’m often impressed by how materialistic artists/designers/writers/intellectuals are in terms of acquiring/possessing/accumulating art/well-designed things. I remember a conversation with Deepal where he talked about kicking it with art students at NYU, and he pejoratively said how all they do is have wine and cheese parties. I said something like, what, art students can’t enjoy the good life?

Ya know, you’re supposed to think that economics and business glorifies the material at the expense of, say, me in my fullness as a human being. Only more recently has economics as a discipline started to look at, happiness for instance, through the lens of the economic man.

Art, on the other hand, is supposed to be all about that which makes us uniquely human. It’s not supposed to be about toys and shiny objects, it’s supposed to be about psychic things like beauty, etc. And the creation of a material thing that we call art is only a matter of necessity in conveying me/my great love/hate to you. In the end, I guess I see the glorification of the object that’s art itself while it’s forgotten that the object is only important insofar as it manifests the spirit that created it—and our attention is properly focused there.

I went to the Muji store in Taipei and I remember having a conversation with Mihir where I rambled on and on about how Muji is retarded. Of course, it’s no brand as a brand and ready-made lifestyle design. I don’t get how McDonalds as lifestyle design sux but Muji or Ikea is acceptable. Maybe Muji design is more aesthetically pleasing than Old McDonald, but if we’re talking about the human spirit here, they’re equally dull in my opinion.